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A BREATHALYZER TO DETECT ILLNESS

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Could the future of early detection really be as simple as breathing into your Smartphone before you ever setting foot in a clinic?

At the forefront of this new innovation is Prof. Hossam Haick, an Arab Israeli professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. As a professor of chemical engineering, Prof. Haick developed the nanotech breath-analysis system now known as Na-Nose. Na-Nose uses nannoarray and breath analysis to detect bio marker of 17 diseases, including cancer, kidney disease, and Heliobactor pylori (a bacteria known to cause peptic ulcers and increase risk of developing stomach cancer).

To make this new, potentially life-saving technology all the more accessible and affordable to the wider public, Haick is also involved in developing the Sniff-Phone. The Sniff-Phone would give smart phones the micro and nano-sensors needed to "read" breath and transfer that information to an information processing system which would interpret and assess the results. Such technology could allow people earlier detection, even before experiencing symptoms or doing additional lab work.